What are the four primary limiting factors of kelp?
The factors influencing kelp forest stability are diverse: kelp harvesting; grazing by fishes, sea urchins, and crustaceans; plant competition; storms; El Niño events; sedimentation; and pollution.
What abiotic factors influence the rate of photosynthesis in kelp?
Abiotic Factors that Affect Kelp Health, Density, and Population. Not unlike terrestrial plants, kelp requires nutrients such as Nitrogen and Phosphorus to grow and reproduce. Seasonal differences in strength of coastal upwelling results in natural variations in nutrient concentrations.
Does kelp take photosynthesis?
Like land plants, kelp uses energy from sunlight to make its own food. This process is called photosynthesis.
What are the three threats to kelp forest?
Strong storms and changing water temperatures can cause changes in kelp forest communities. Human activities also impact the health of kelp forests through coastal development, sedimentation, pollution, and fishing.
Why are kelp forests declining?
Northern California’s kelp forests are declining due to two stressors. First, there has been unusual and drastic ocean warming in the area. Second, sea star wasting disease is killing the main predator of sea urchins, the sunflower sea star. There are even efforts to farm kelp to reduce climate change.
How does sedimentation affect kelp forests?
Kelp forests on coastal rocky shores are negatively impacted by sudden sediment loads that can occur with storms and floods. The zoospore adhesion rate and the gametophyte survival and growth rates all declined markedly with increasing sediment load, particularly with smaller particle diameter.
How do currents affect kelp forests?
Currents deliver resources such as nutrients and organic matter to kelp forests and affect the paths of larvae and spores, contributing to both growth rates and recruitment patterns of new individuals (Graham 2003; Fram et al. 2008).
How are kelp forests like land forests?
Kelp forests provide food and shelter for thousands of species. They grow in dense groupings much like a forest on land. These underwater towers of kelp provide food and shelter for thousands of fish, invertebrates, and marine mammal species.
What part of seaweed is responsible for photosynthesis?
Like vascular plants, green algae have chloroplasts within their cells that conduct photosynthesis.
Why is the Kelp Forest struggling?
Globally, kelp grow in forests along the coastlines of every continent except Antarctica; most of these are threatened by climate change, coastal development, pollution, fishing, and invasive predators.
How does global warming affect kelp forests?
The primary culprit is climate change: These giant algae need to be bathed in cool, nutrient-rich currents to thrive, yet regional warming in recent decades has extended the waters of the warmer East Australian Current into Tasmanian seas to devastating effect, wiping out kelp forests one by one.
What would happen if kelp forests disappear?
Global warming and the associated rising of ocean temperatures can negatively affect these ecosystems. If temperatures continue to rise, the oceans may become too warm to allow kelp growth; therefore, existing kelp would die and restoration would be next to impossible because young kelp is especially vulnerable.
What factors affect the stability of kelp forests?
The factors influencing kelp forest stability are diverse: kelp harvesting; grazing by fishes, sea urchins, and crustaceans; plant competition; storms; El Niño events; sedimentation; and pollution.
How many organisms live in a kelp forest?
The kelp in the kelp forests is able to support more than 1,000 living organisms in the kelp forests. The organisms living in the forest must be able to withstand its temperatures of about 5-20 C 43-72 F.
What is kelp and how does it grow?
It is a chemical that can only grow when it is attached to a plant, meaning it can’t stick to sand or soft substrate. Runoff is a major factor in the kelp forest because it influences the kelp. When chemicals run into the ocean they cause the kelp to either grow too much or kill it off, depending on the chemical.
How do limiting factors affect the rate of photosynthesis?
This means that the factor directly affects the rate of photosynthesis on its own, regardless of the level of the other factors. The major limiting factors for photosynthesis are light intensity, temperature, and carbon dioxide levels. Since photosynthesis cannot begin without light, it is the first limiting factor.